Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) is an expanding global initiative oriented at slowing or reversing carbon emissions from forests in the Global South. The programme is based on the principle of payment for environmental services, where the carbon sequestration services of forests are seen to have a financial value which can be paid for through grant and market mechanisms. In this paper we explore how REDD+ is implemented, drawing upon the concept of governmentality. We focus on REDD+ practices in Indonesia, concluding with a case study focused on the Sungai Lamandau REDD+ project in Central Kalimantan. A cross-scalar approach is adopted that explores the different but overlapping strategies of actors congregating at international, national, and local scales. We detail the neoliberal strategies employed by international actors; the more disciplinary approaches evident within national planning processes; and local forms of engagement being practised by a forest community. Our findings reveal REDD+ to be comprised of a heterogeneous regime of disjointed practices that reflect the existing political ecologies and interests of differently located actors. Rather than consolidate these approaches we argue that the strength of the programme lies in its fluidity, which is creating new cross-scalar opportunities, and risks, for those pursuing forms of social and environmental justice.

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Concern around the carbon footprint of Bitcoin is not holding back blockchain developers from leveraging the technology for action on climate change. Whilst blockchain is enabling individuals, companies and even cities to manage their carbon emissions, the social and environmental costs and benefits of doing so remain unclear. This July saw the release of the University of Cambridge's Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), an online tool providing real-time conjectures around the electricity requirements of the Bitcoin network. The prestige afforded towards Cambridge is likely to propel the CBECI model ahead of the popular Digiconomist tool, which released its Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index in 2017. Despite the apparent advancement, the increasingly complex modelling of Bitcoin's energy requirements is yet to provide any further clarity. The CBECI analysis, for example, suggests that total power consumption, at the time of writing this, falls within a range of between 21 Twh and 146 Twh. To put that in perspective, those figures equate to somewhere between the energy consumption of Yorkshire and Poland 1. The network's energy requirements are as erratic as Bitcoin's price, depending as much on local weather events near remote Chinese hydroelectric plants, as the efficiency of energy-intensive servers that facilitate the Bitcoin blockchain 2. Bitcoin's computationally-demanding infrastructure enables digital payments to be validated via a decentralized, automated 'Proof of Work' (PoW) consensus protocol. For Bitcoin, the validation of transactions requires 'miners' using dedicated servers to solve hash puzzles in order to add valid entries to a shared database, and to secure new Bitcoins as a reward. The difficulty of these puzzles

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is an ambitiousglobal programme oriented towards improving forest carbon management. It aims to attract new sources of 'green' capital to fund emissions reductions from avoided deforestation and sustainable forest management. REDD+ is transforming forest conservation, as a diverse array of new stakeholders become involved. Not surprisingly, REDD+ has proved divisive, as critics concern themselves with issues of power, justice, and commodification, while practice-oriented researchers tackle similar issues from different perspectives, focusing on benefit sharing, safeguards, additionality, measuring and verification. In this paper we explore the different roles of critical and practical research, and argue that there is a need for greater sharing of knowledge across current divides. We draw on our own experiences of conducting a research project on REDD+ in Indonesia that involved critical and practice-oriented researchers. We argue that critical research disconnected from practical matters can have perverse outcomes for practitioners who are ultimately working towards similar goals; while uncritical practice-oriented research has the potential to lead to a dilution of core values of environmental justice and conservation. In contrast, forms of practical critique provide ways of researching REDD+ that have practical value while maintaining critical insights.

In this commentary, we explore how blockchain is being leveraged to address the fundamental problems with market-based forest protection globally. In doing so, we consider the ways 'cryptocarbon' initiatives are creating new challenges that have so far escaped critical scrutiny. A blockchain is a distributed and immutable electronic database-a ledger of every transaction that has ever taken place on a network, with the data stored as cryptographically secured blocks, strung together in a chain. The technology is being increasingly hyped as applicable for a whole range of industries, social service provisions, and environmental management concerns. This includes the facilitation of natural asset market mechanisms, like Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). The original aim of REDD+ was to incentivise conservation, making tropical forests more valuable standing than cut down. Multiple factors, including lack of consumer interest, created a deluge of supply. Ninety-five percent of the world's avoided deforestation credits, representing millions of hectares of conserved forest, were stuck without a buyer. Several flagging REDD+ projects are now hoping that blockchain technology can carry them to new heights of market capitalisation. However, like with any powerful new technology, the benefits remain ambiguous.